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A Church center in Pakistan’s cosmopolitan eastern city of Lahore has been threatened with a suicide bomb attack, one of a series of intimidating messages given to Christians as the country’s security crisis worsens.

The threat was delivered on June 10 to a Christian woman who lives next to Rabita Manzil, the National Catholic Office for Social Communications, which includes the offices of the WAVE (Workshop Audio Visual Education) studio, Radio Veritas Asia’s Urdu service and the Union of Catholic Asian News.

The woman said two masked men arrived on a motorbike without number plates.

“We know that you and those at the recording studio are Christians. We warn you to leave this area, embrace Islam, pay 1,500,000 rupees (US$18,750) or be ready to die in a suicide bomb attack. Inform your neighbors as well,” she quoted the men as saying.

Christians have received similar threats in various parts of the country as fighting between government troops and the Taliban militants continues to rage in the country’s northwest.

Sacred Heart Cathedral, several Catholic schools in Lahore and various pastors have received threatening notes telling them to convert to Islam.

A Pentecostal Bible school in the southwestern city of Quetta was closed indefinitely after suspected Taliban militants threatened a suicide bomb attack last month.

Father Nadeem John Shakir, director of Rabita Manzil, issued a statement in Lahore immediately after learning about the threat to his center.

“This is the first time the studio has received such warning,” Father Shakir said in the press release June 10. “This has made us sad and very insecure. We are quite helpless in this regard. The threat has also demoralized our employees. If something happens to our center a number of Church activities will collapse.”

In his statement, Father Shakir called on people to prayer for studio staff and those engaged in “such inhuman acts or supporters of such beastly activities, so that they may change their nature and become good human beings.”

The priest told UCA News that neighbors of the center had been supportive.

“However, no one can guarantee the security of our houses, convents, churches, schools, hospitals and other institutions. Even the law enforcement agencies are not safe themselves.”

Intense government fighting against Taliban militants has triggered a wave of attacks in cities across the country, the most recent being a suicide bombing of a hotel in Peshawar on June 9. The attack on the city’s premier Pearl Continental Hotel left 11 dead, including two UN aid workers, and 60 injured.

The latest bombing affects relief efforts in the country. Peshawar lies near the Swat Valley, where Pakistani government forces are battling Taliban militia in fighting that has forced more than 2.5 million people from their homes. The hotel was used by some foreign aid workers helping the displaced.

Mohammad Qatanani’s mosque was full of FBI agents the night before he was to find out whether he would be deported.

But even though the federal government was trying to link Mr. Qatanani to foreign extremists, the agents weren’t there to keep an eye on him. They wanted to show their support for a Muslim leader they considered a valued ally for the relationships he helped forge between the FBI and Muslims in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

Across the nation, such grass-roots relationships between Muslims and the federal government are in jeopardy. A coalition of Muslim groups is calling for Muslims to stop cooperating with the FBI, not on national security or safety issues but on community outreach.

The coalition is upset over what it says is increasing government surveillance in mosques, new Justice Department guidelines that the groups say encourage profiling, and the FBI’s recent suspension of ties with the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

A petition that opposes FBI tactics is circulating in Muslim communities and has been gaining support, said coalition Chairman Agha Saeed. The coalition, represented by the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, has requested a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to discuss what it sees as a deteriorating relationship between the FBI and Muslim communities.

“We have to decide what we’re doing as a country. If it’s not a war on Islam, then these practices must be stopped,” Mr. Saeed said. “We’re not asking for special treatment, just equal treatment.”

A number of Muslim groups, including some of the nation’s most prominent, have declined to sign the petition. Other organizations say they agree with parts of the petition but also support ongoing dialogue with law enforcement.

FBI spokesman John Miller said the agency values its relationships with Muslims and has worked hard on outreach efforts that range from town hall meetings to diversity training for FBI agents.

“I think a lot of these inaccurate statements and claims have the potential to do damage to those relationships,” Mr. Miller said. “What we’ve suggested to the major [Muslim] groups is that we try to separate the real issues from the sound bites, and if we can identify those real issues, tackle them together.”

Supporters of the petition cite recent cases in California and Michigan where the FBI has been accused of using informants and coercive tactics to spy on mosques.

A federal judge in California ordered a review last week of FBI inquiries into several Muslim groups and activists who claim they have been spied on and unfairly questioned. A Muslim organization in Detroit asked Mr. Holder in mid-April to investigate complaints that the FBI asked mosque attendees to spy on Islamic leaders and worshippers.

Mr. Miller said there is no factual basis for claims the FBI infiltrates mosques or conducts blanket surveillance of Muslim leaders. “Based on information of a threat of violence or a crime, we investigate individuals, and those investigations may take us to the places those individual go,” he said.

Mr. Miller questioned the timing of the petition, noting that it comes after the FBI suspended ties with CAIR, partly because it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a group charged with bankrolling schools and social welfare programs the U.S. government says are controlled by Hamas.

Afsheen Shamsi, a spokeswoman for CAIR’s New Jersey chapter, dismissed the idea that the petition is retaliation. She said it reflects the concerns of Muslims who have grown tired of being stopped at airports, constant questioning and relentless scrutiny eight years after the attacks of Sept. 11.

“I believe the Muslim community is questioning whether the mosque visits and the handshakes are just a big show by the FBI, while behind the scenes, they continue to engage in questionable practices,” she said.

The petition is gaining little traction in New Jersey, home to one of the nation’s largest concentrations of Muslims, and a place where relationships between Muslims and law enforcement were heavily tested in the aftermath of 9/11.

New Jersey lost 744 residents in the attacks; many Muslims were among the victims. Several of the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Paterson for a time, and many Muslims detained after the attacks were held in New Jersey jails.

But Muslim leaders said the FBI distinguished itself by reaching out to Muslims, Arab Americans and groups like Sikhs in the wake of 9/11. Relationships forged between the FBI and Muslim leaders in New Jersey have endured.

At Mr. Qatanani’s mosque in Paterson after 9/11, the imam invited FBI agents to lecture congregants on how to recognize terrorists. Mr. Qatanani also helped train FBI agents on how to deal respectfully with Muslim detainees and community members.

When Mr. Qatanani became the subject of a high-profile deportation case last year, several high-ranking law enforcement officials took the stand on his behalf.

Aref Assaf, a mosque member and supporter of Mr. Qatanani who heads the Paterson-based American Arab Forum, said despite the imam’s immigration ordeal, he has urged his supporters not to sever ties with federal law enforcement. When the petition came up at a recent meeting of New Jersey Muslim leaders, Mr. Assaf said many declined to sign it.

“I’m a believer that law enforcement does not have a built-in anti-Muslim policy,” he said. “I know from dealing with FBI leaders they have been very forceful in their expressions of solidarity with our faith and culture. But there is a line, where we have to accept that as part of our dealings with them, they have a job to do, to make sure there are no terrorists in our midst or anywhere else.”

Mr. Saeed said relationships between the FBI and Muslims in other parts of the country have been more one-sided.

“There was a sense of mutuality at first. … These local connections people made, they wanted to see it as working with law enforcement and making the community better,” he said. “I am stupefied by the fact that [the FBI] are burning down the bridges that they need.”

A U.S. ‘shock jock’ DJ named among 16 extremists and fanatics banned from the UK has said he will sue Jacqui Smith for defamation.

Michael Savage, who has up to 10 million listeners, branded Home Secretary Jacqui Smith a ‘lunatic’ and a ‘witch’ after being named alongside hate preachers and a member of Hamas.

Last night lawyers suggested he had a strong case as he had not advocated violence, unlike others on the list. It was thought he could claim up to £200,000 in damages.

The presenter is furious at being put on the list of 22 hardliners banned from entering the UK because the Home Office claims they have fostered extremism or hatred.

He says he had not been planning to travel to Britain anyway and has now called on his millions of listeners to boycott the country.

Mr Savage added: ‘It’s interesting to me that here I am a talk show host, who does not advocate violence, who advocates patriotic traditional values – borders, language, culture – who is now on a list banned in England.

‘What does that say about the government of England? It says more about them than it says about me.’

The list has turned into another humiliating gaffe for the Home Secretary after officials were forced to admit not all the fanatics, like Mr Savage, wanted to come to the UK.

It has emerged their names were placed on it simply on the off-chance they may decide to visit.

At least two – teenage skinheads Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky – have no chance of boarding a plane to Britain since they are currently serving ten years in a Russian jail for leading a gang which committed 20 racially-motivated murders.

Challenged to say how many on the banned list had been planning to visit Britain, a Home Office spokesman said today: ‘I do not have that information.’

Mr Savage declared: ‘I have been banned from Great Britain. I had not planned on going there, I had not been there in over 25 years.

‘When I woke up this morning I just thought I could not be true. The point is that today it is me, tomorrow it will be somebody else.’

Using his show The Savage Nation, which is broadcast on more than 350 U.S. radio stations, to attack the ban, he called Miss Smith a ‘witch’.

‘For her to link me up with skinheads who are killing people in Russia, to put me in league with mass murderers who kill Jews on buses, is defamation,’ he claimed.

‘I thought this was a joke or a mistake. How could they put Michael Savage in the same league with mass murderers when I have never avowed violence? As a result of this, I am going to sue.’

He added: ‘When has this witch heard my show, since it’s not syndicated in England?

‘Thank God we broke away from that cowardly country.’

‘That is exactly the kind of speech the founders of our country meant to protect with the First Amendment.

‘And it should send a cold chill through the heart of any man who loves freedom when he asks himself, “whose ideas and speech will be banned by government next”.’

Jameel Jaffer, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the move showed countries were prepared to ‘use their borders as a weapon of censorship’.

‘While some of these people may express views that others find disagreeable, often the cure is worse than the disease,’ said Mr Jaffer. ‘It also deprives the citizens of that country of their ability to hear dissenting views.’

MIKE SAVAGE: ‘You know, when I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi.’
He has called the Koran ‘a book of hate’ and added that some Muslims, at least, ‘need deportation’.

Has Obama started to revel his true colors or is he politically so naive for his series of anti-American policy blunders?? First he is praised Muslims in United states for changing the America for better, I ask which Muslim did what to change the face of America?? May be he is mentioning the 9/11 and the constant threat of a nuke attack our country is facing from the Muslim terrorist everyday. Then his bend over act before Saudi dictator, which makes everyone wonder how will he as the head of state dictate any US interests assertively when it comes to our relation with the Saudis and their Islamic extremist indoctrination of their own future generation and their spreading of evil Islamic teachings to the US by Islamic schools (Madrssas) in the US. Then came the reveling secret memos of our primary protector of the CIA, all this along with the latest that he will not meet with the leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, of a democratically elected and one of our best friends Israel

“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday canceled his plans to attend the upcoming AIPAC summit, after it became clear that US President Barack Obama would not meet him during the conference.

Netanyahu announced that while he will not attend the conference in person, he will send a video-taped message to Washington.

Army Radio reported that the prime minister asked President Shimon Peres to represent Israel at the summit, scheduled to take place in Washington in the beginning of May.

According to the radio station, sources in the president’s bureau confirmed that Peres had received a request from Netanyahu and AIPAC officials to attend the summit, but noted that the president had not yet decided whether to accept the invitation. “

Jpost.com

NOTE:

I may be criticizing Mr. Obama, my intention is to point to his mistakes rather than stand opposed to him as a person, I’m not saying Obama is perfect, don’t we all make mistakes what I’m saying is Obama is the best bet we have when compared to Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin or any republicans who do not represent the middle class or people other than the white race or people other than the christian religion, nor do they agree to freedom of peoples choices.

Rome, 10 March (AKI) – The Italian government investigated 216 terror threats against Italy last year, concluding that Islamist cells were the “primary threat to the public interest, both inside Italy and abroad,” according to a report released on Tuesday.

The extent of the terror threat was revealed in an anti-terrorism report presented to the department of information security.

Al-Qaeda’s leadership “is still playing a central role” in international terrorism, the report said, adding that investigators were giving priority to probes of jihadist plots.

In Italy, Islamist terror cells were “fluid and scattered”, tending to coalesce around “charismatic individuals,” the report stated.

Prisons are an increasingly important jihadist recruiting ground, where convicted Islamist terrorists are indoctrinating young detainees, the report said.

It said the northern region of Lombardy is one of the main strongholds of Islamist radicalism, “where elements already known to the police are being joined by new recruits and gradually replaced.”

Another hotspot is the southern Campania region surrounding Naples. “Here, foreign extremists are finding synergies with North African counterfeiters,” said the report.

Other sensitive areas include the northern Piemonte, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions and the central Tuscany region, the report noted.

“The threat to Italy has become a rapidly changing and unpredictable one,” it said.

The report stressed the importance of the Internet to Islamist terrorists in Italy and elsewhere.

“The Internet has become a primary reference point and source of inspiration for so-called lone terrorists seeking to wage jihad,” the report said.

The “multinational” nature of jihadist cells and networks, the increasing number of “home-grown” militants, and the importance of the Internet for radicalizing, recruiting and training, characterize Islamist terrorism throughout Europe, the report concluded.

The Islamic militants who attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team also have Britain and the US in their sights, write Omar Waraich and Raymond Whitaker.

Three separate bombings, including one in which a dead body was used to lure policemen to the scene, killed 15 people in Pakistan yesterday, underlining the helplessness of the authorities as they search in vain for the militants who attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team last week.

Six policemen were killed on Tuesday as a dozen gunmen ambushed the Sri Lankan team bus in broad daylight in the centre of Lahore, long regarded as Pakistan’s least-troubled city. The cricketers escaped with relatively minor wounds, but the sight of them having to be evacuated by helicopter from the pitch where they were due to play a Test match against Pakistan, coupled with widespread reporting of the reaction of English and Australian match officials, and coaches caught up in the attack, brought home to millions what the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, described as the “mortal threat” that Pakistan faces from its “internal enemies”. It was the first direct terrorist attack on a sports team since the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Yesterday seven policemen and a bystander died in the worst bombing of the day, underlining the extent to which large areas of Pakistan have slipped out of government control. The incident occurred in the Badaber area of Peshawar, where the authorities believed they had achieved a rare success against the militants, who were recently driven back by local people working with law enforcement agencies. But the militants promised revenge, and lured the police to their deaths. An anonymous phone call said a body had been left in a car; when the police approached, a bomb in the car was detonated by remote control.

Hours earlier, an improvised explosive device damaged a military convoy as it passed through the notorious arms-manufacturing town of Darra Adam Khel, on the edge of the tribal areas. Three passers-by were killed and four troops injured, while a suicide bombing in a mosque in Khyber killed four and wounded five.

The attacks emphasise that the civilian government of President Asif Zardari is no more effective than the military rule of his predecessor, General Pervez Musharraf, at stemming the brutal advance of militancy across the country. Indeed, Mr Zardari and his Pakistan People’s Party seem more preoccupied with using the judiciary to exclude a former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and his brother, Shahbaz, from office than confronting the militant threat. Shahbaz was ousted as premier of Punjab province, whose capital is Lahore, just before the attack on the cricketers, bringing accusations that the political turmoil had hampered security arrangements.

Mr Miliband made his “mortal threat” comment during an appeal to Pakistan’s civilian politicians to cease their infighting and unite against adversaries who regard both sides as obstacles to their dream of turning Pakistan into a regime similar to Afghanistan under the Taliban. This year both American and British officials have become increasingly open about their fear that Pakistan – which has nuclear weapons under the control of a military at least to some extent open to extremist influence – is a greater danger than Afghanistan.

Security agencies have warned that two-thirds of the terror plots Britain faces originate in Pakistan, or are supported from there. But the inability or unwillingness of Pakistan to curb the flow of militants into Afghanistan also poses a direct threat to British and American troops there. The task of the Nato forces may be further complicated by political turmoil in Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai, whose term expires next month, finally accepted yesterday that an election could not be held until August, when the “surge” of up to 30,000 extra US troops will have had time to stabilise the country. But he wants to stay in office until then, while his opponents insist that he step down in April.

Recently MPs were told in London that Pakistani generals still considered it in the country’s strategic interest to have the Taliban – which was created by Pakistan’s military intelligence service – in power in Kabul rather than President Karzai’s government, which is closer to India. Shaun Gregory, head of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at Bradford University, told the Foreign Affairs Committee that Pakistan’s role in the Afghan Taliban’s comeback “lies somewhere between passive tolerance … [and] open and active support”. Britain, the US and Nato found themselves “reliant on an ‘ally’ which does not share their interests and whom they cannot trust”.

Other experts told the committee that Pakistan showed little interest in tackling Islamic lmilitant commanders such as Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, both old mujahedin leaders in Afghanistan who have thrown in their lot with al-Qa’ida and with the foreign Islamists who have made their base in Waziristan, the largest and most lawless of the tribal areas along the Pakistani border. Instead, the Pakistani military has been battling a new generation of younger militants who want to “Talibanise” Pakistan.

They include the leader of the Pakistan Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, 34, who is accused of sending the suicide bombers who killed President Zardari’s wife, Benazir Bhutto, in December 2007, after which he inherited her political mantle. The Pakistani military formed an alliance with two of Mr Mehsud’s rivals, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who concentrated on fighting in Afghanistan, and mounted a joint campaign against the Pakistani Taliban leader and his al-Qa’ida aligned Uzbek cohorts. But now, as Washington has stepped up its CIA-operated drone strikes in tribal areas, Mr Nazir and Mr Bahadur appear to have cut ties with the Pakistan army and joined Mr Mehsud to form “Shura Ittehad Mujahedin”, or Council of United Jihadists. The new Waziristan alliance has declared Afghanistan’s former leader, Mullah Omar, its spiritual guide, and Islamabad, Kabul and Washington its enemies.

Pakistan’s army sees the move as a setback to its efforts to divide and rule in the tribal areas, while the continuing spate of American missile attacks, including a report yesterday of a drone that crashed in the tribal areas, emphasises Washington’s lack of confidence in the Pakistan government’s ability to serve American interests.

The Obama administration has recently broadened its range of targets, striking for the first time last month training camps run by Hakimullah Mehsud, an associate of Baitullah Mehsud. Militants and suspected criminal elements working with Hakimullah were responsible for a flurry of attacks on Nato convoys destined for Afghanistan as they approached the Khyber Pass.

Islamabad is more concerned about militants such as Maulana Fazlullah of the Swat valley. The Taliban commander seized up to four-fifths of the valley in a brutal campaign, and, faced with losing the valley to the Taliban, the government sued for peace last month. It signed a deal with Mr Fazlullah’s estranged father-in-law, Sufi Mohammed, as the army ceased its military operation. The government bowed to Sufi Mohammed’s demands, imposing Islamic law in the area in return for a cessation of hostilities. Analysts worry the concession could create a sanctuary for Islamic militants, including al-Qa’ida, just a three-hour drive from Islamabad.

The spread of Islamic militancy across the Indus river to the more populous, settled areas of Pakistan is likely to widen the divergence of interests between Islamabad and the West still further. After six suicide attacks in 2006, suicide bombings in Pakistan have shot up to 10 times that number in each of the two following years. The commando-style attack in Lahore, echoing the assault on India’s richest city, Mumbai, last November, brings a new tactic to parts of Pakistan which have never had to think about the wars raging in the mountains and plains further west.